Waves of change in tiny Prospect Park are fodder for university study team

PROSPECT PARK — Up until the 1960s, having a barbecue on the Christian Sabbath "wasn’t even thought of."

"If you took out the garbage on Sunday, you had to wear a suit and tie," said Thomas Magura, a lifelong resident of the borough. That was how strictly people adhered to the Dutch religious-influenced blue laws that meant to preserve Sundays as a day of rest and worship.

Despite the sweeping shifts in recent decades in the ethnic makeup of the borough — Hispanics and Latinos are half the population — the Dutch influence lives on.

That was among the findings of a group of students at William Paterson University, who spent the past two years roaming the borough to study its cultural transformation.

Along with their anthropology professor, Ronald Verdicchio, students Eman Al-Jayeh, Bria Barnes, Kelly Ginart, Amani Kattaya, Megan Perry and Paige Rainville talked to residents and community leaders at borough hall, Prospect Park Elementary School, firehouses and a church, as well as digging through archives at Lambert Castle, home of the Passaic County Historical Society.

Their research is set to be published in December as a book, "Prospect Park," which will be part of the "Images of America" series on local history.

The students also helped establish the position of borough historian and one of them, Perry, attended the Borough Council meeting in January at which Magura, 71, was appointed to the post by Mayor Mohamed Khairullah. Magura has served as the students’ reference for their research.

The students said they were surprised to learn how big a role Dutch identity has played since Prospect Park’s founding by Dutch immigrants — many of whom arrived in the United States after the Civil War. The borough was formed from a part of the former Manchester Township.

"This borough has a very rich Dutch history," said Barnes, a junior, who said it used to be a "homogenous community of Dutch," but now encompasses African-American, Arab and Hispanic populations.

The Dutch past echoes throughout town: The borough’s seal is a windmill. The park at the northern end of the borough is Hofstra Park. Last names beginning with "van" are still common. Prospect Park and surrounding boroughs are known as the Dutch hills. Unity Church on North 11th Street was created in 1986 in the joining of two Christian Reformed churches that originated in the late 19th century.

For decades after the borough’s establishment, some residents would attend council meetings and speak in Dutch, and minutes of meetings were kept in Dutch and English, Verdicchio said.

"They didn’t have bars," said Kattaya, a senior. "They had Sunday blue laws as well."

Prospect Park’s restrictions on Sunday activity were more stringent than most, resulting in fines even for playing sports or washing cars.

The severest restrictions — such as the ban on sports — were lifted in 1991 after a Fair Lawn carpenter received a summons for fixing a leaky radiator hose on his disabled truck on a Sunday and paid a $15 fine. He sued the borough, arguing the law violated the principle of separation of church and state.

The council left in place the ban on retail, and in a November 1991 referendum, voters overwhelmingly opted to continue the Sunday sales ban.

To this day, Prospect Park remains a dry town, with no bars or liquor stores — a influence that can be traced back to the founding Dutch Calvinists, Magura said.

And the Dutch emphasis on religion and family still holds, even if the religious strands are more varied. The mayor, for example, is Muslim.

"These core values are still evident in the town," Rainville, a junior, said. "They haven’t just gone away."

Magura said he’s witnessed firsthand the changes the students have studied.

"After World War II, there was a change in the breakdown of groups in Prospect Park," he said. A lot of the Dutch moved to more affluent boroughs, such as Midland Park and North Haledon, as Italian immigrants and African-Americans moved in.